Not sure if you are familiar with CFS and what Isambard and Mike are talking about. In CFS the airfiles and damage profiles(actually everything) can edited by anyone that downloads a few small utilities. Of course Microsoft's intentions was to allow players to add their own favorite aircraft like in Flight Simulator but you can imagine what happened online. Why fly a 6000lb 2000hp airplane when you can have 1500lb 4000hp airplane? And as long as you got all hp might as well increase the ammo load and a few cannon. And gee seems like I read something about my plane being tough so I think'll double the damage profile and so on and so on.
About the only way I could see of having open architecture and safe MMP would be to have the aircraft data server side and separate from the SP ones. Or some kind of verification program to ensure everyone is using the same deck of cards. Something tells me both are easier said than done.
